Ed Miliband: On Wikipedia it says I was lead singer in a punk band ..I've left it on there because I wish it was true

In just a couple of months there will be another set of Miliband brothers on the scene.

In just a couple of months there will be another set of Miliband brothers on the scene.

Their dad, Ed Miliband, is fretting over the prospect of sibling rivalry between his son Daniel and the baby due in November.

"There will be a very small gap between them, just 17 or 18 months," says Ed.

"I'm not sure how Daniel is going to react but we are taking advice. People say it is good if there is a present for him from the new baby so he doesn't think, 'I want to throw you out of the cot'. I'm sure there will be some of that though!"

Yes, younger brothers sure can upset the smooth running of things for their big brothers, as David Miliband has discovered in the Labour leadership contest.

This weekend polls showed Ed, 40, to be narrowing the gap on David, 45, in the battle to lead the party into the next election.

TOGETHER

So how did the original Milibrothers get on as children? Were any babies being thrown out of cots back then?

"We've always got on well," laughs Ed. "David was four when I was born and his first words when Dad came back from the hospital were 'Has it popped out yet?'

"We played together but as we got older we had separate lives and friends. I was more computer games, he was more football. "Scalectrix was our big thing. I remember playing that a lot and probably losing."

So is now the time for revenge for those plastic race track humiliations.

"Well I don't know about that," he says.

In fact, Ed reckons sibling rivalry is not really a good thing. "No, I don't think so," he says. "Competition is good but sibling love is very important."

And, like his brother, Ed is certain the pair will remain friends whatever the outcome of the Labour leadership contest.

"Of course we will," he says. "I think we've both handled this thing pretty well. We have had different things to say but we have done it in good spirit."

But maybe it hasn't been ideal for family relations and their poor mum, Marion.

"Yes, I'm not sure really that I would recommend my two boys to go into politics," he says. "We'll have to let them decide but I hope they learn it is good to care about the world, not just about yourself."

Caring about the world was the backdrop to the Miliband brothers' childhood. Their parents, Ralph and Marion, were Jewish ›migr›s who owed their lives to people who took huge risks to help them.

"My dad came over with his father on one of the last boats out of Belgium in 1940," says Ed. "His mother and sister stayed and were in hiding with a man who bought hats from their market stall. By the end of the war there were 26 members of our family in that man's village.

"My mother was in Poland and was hidden in various places until eventually a Catholic family took them in. She is still in touch with some members of that family now.

"Growing up in a secure home in north London in the 1970s it all seemed a long way away in the past.

"But indirectly I think it did affect me because we were so keenly aware of why politics mattered and it could be a matter of life and death.

"We all have a duty to do something about injustices we see. The fact people hadn't walked by on the other side was the reason my parents were alive." His family's difficult history and his father's heart problems curtailed any sense of rebellion in the teenage Ed Miliband.

Younger brothers are often the more outrageous sibling, freed from the constraints and pressure placed on elder children. It could have made Ed the Liam Gallagher to his brother's Noel.

But Ed says: "I wasn't a teenage rebel. On Wikipedia it says I was the lead singer in a punk band. I've left it on there because I wish it was true but it's not.

"My dad was 46 when he had me so he was an older father. Then when I was three he had quite a serious heart attack.

"From then on I think I was aware of a vulnerability in him and that made me less rebellious. He had a serious heart-bypass when I was 21 and died when I was 24."

Ralph was a prominent Marxist and lecturer but his sons remember his dedication as a dad as much as his politics.

Ed says: "When I was about eight Dad went to work in America for about six months every year. When I was 12 I went with him which was great as it brought us even closer but goodness knows how we coped.

"We'd have cold spaghetti out of a tin for dinner. I'd say, 'I think maybe this spaghetti should be warmed up Dad,' and he'd say, 'I think you might be right about that.'

"Politics did play a big part in our lives but it wasn't Marx for breakfast. We had a lot of fun. Dad always made time for us."

But life cannot always have been easy for a non-rebellious, politically aware teenager at Haverstock Comprehensive in North London? "I got on OK, occasionally beaten up, but not too badly!" he laughs.

After graduating from Oxford and working as a political adviser, Ed stood to become a Labour candidate at the 2005 election soon after meeting lawyer Justine Thornton at a party.

"I rang her one night before I was going for my selection meeting in Doncaster and said: 'If I win this and get through to be the candidate why don't you come up and, you know, give me a hand on the campaign'."

Now there's an offer a girl can't refuse. And Justine didn't, trekking up to South Yorkshire in the run-up to the election to help out wherever she could.

"I think the old ladies in my constituency were a bit suspicious," laughs Ed. "They kept saying to her, 'You're telling us you've come up all this way to put out chairs for a meeting. That doesn't sound very likely'."

TOLERANT

After Ed's success in the election the pair started dating and have been together ever since. Marriage is "on the agenda" according to Ed, although possibly little higher than Any Other Business.

He says: "We will get married at some point but we will do it in our own time.

"There are very stable families where partners aren't married and I am proud that we are a very tolerant country now and we don't judge families on the way they are."

His critics fear Ed Miliband's policies could boot the party back into the political wilderness for a decade. They whisper about him being just a bit too much of a leftie.

"Yes, it's funny that's a criticism for the leader of the Labour Party, isn't it?" he laughs. "You don't have to be a leftie to think that bankers paying themselves millions when it's not justified is just wrong."

Yet Ed's most pressing problem is finding a double buggy for his toddler and new baby.

Should he and Justine go for a side-by-side model - or opt for one of those with one child sitting behind the other?

If the older generation is anything to go by, new baby Miliband will have no intention of being stuck in a back seat...